Shanzhai: China’s Collaborative Electronics-Design Ecosystem

In Shenzhen, there are hundreds of smart watches, not just design prototypes. Here's why.

Gongban 公办 and gongmo 公模 - public board and public casing: key elements of Shenzhen's open source manufacturing.

Cyberspace, both as word and as vision, entered the popular lexicon through William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. But as it turns out, Gibson wasn’t interested in the Internet until he started buying watches on Ebay. In a 1999 Wired article, he details his compulsive addiction to bidding for vintage mechanical watches—what Gibson calls “fine fossils of a predigital age.” Little did Gibson know that thirty years after Neuromancer, watches and cyberspace would fuse—not only because it is now commonplace to buy watches online, but also thanks to “smart watches” set to become the latest portal into cyberspace.... [keep reading here].